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Wendy Beer

LambMetrics – 2nd September 2022

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LambMetrics is our lambing blog which tells some of the tales of farm life at lambing time.
Also contains pretty lamb pictures – and maybe a few confronting ones too.

Beautiful sunshine today. Cold wind though.

Managed to get through my backlog of tagging lambs. Still have to put it all on paper/computer to add up but hopefully there will be stats tomorrow night. Which will be good since there are only about 40 ewes left to lamb?!

First thing this morning though – TRIPLETS! 🙂

Dear Mona had these lovely little lambs (definitely not as big as Hermione’s!) which was 2 black lambs and 1 white. Mona’s mother, Mopsy, is a black/silver so it’s good to carry on the coloured English Leicester genes. 🙂

Mona is 4 years old this year and I was going to link to a blog post about her birth – since her mum was not well and so Mona was hand-raised – but I discovered I didn’t do LambMetrics in 2018… oops. oh well, here’s a baby pic of Mona and her sister instead!

Despite the sunny weather and lots of lambs I basically forgot to take photos. Ooops. That’s the trouble when running about after them all and trying to make sure all the twins are together and being recorded correctly.

Mona and her lambs

LambMetrics – 1st September 2022

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LambMetrics is our lambing blog which tells some of the tales of farm life at lambing time.
Also contains pretty lamb pictures – and maybe a few confronting ones too.

A huge day today due to shifting the Singles mob. I haven’t been able to “drift off” the new lambs like I can do with the Twins group so it was time for a catch up on the tags and numbers. It gets harder and harder to really tell which ones may have issues when there are a lot of mixed age lambs in one mob. And nothing like impetus of “get a new bale of hay or change paddocks” to get things done.

The lamb backlog will be finished tomorrow but they aren’t helping – at least 4 sets of twins born this afternoon while I was in town for an appointment and then they were all starting to get mixed up so it was time for a change in that paddock too. Lambs everywhere.

The remaining pregnant ewes (approx 25% of the original number) are all together now and they will get their lovely big bale of hay tomorrow. Hopefully I can get back to the daily drift and keep on top of the numbers then!

One Drysdale ewe assisted this morning. Unfortunately, her ram lamb was trying to exit with back feet first and it wasn’t successful. She’s okay but the lamb was lost.

Polly – former pet lamb – delivered her twins today and she is a bit of a dill so she’s now in the garden with Hermione to try and stop her letting her lambs get stolen/mixed up/forgotten.

Time to go feed some lambs again so here’s a little gallery of today’s pics. (I really need to delete some off the phone before I run out of memory!)

  • Drysdale ewe and lambs
  • English Leicester ewe with lamb
  • Polly
  • One of Polly’s lambs

LambMetrics – 31st August 2022

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LambMetrics is our lambing blog which tells some of the tales of farm life at lambing time.
Also contains pretty lamb pictures – and maybe a few confronting ones too.

Lovely spring day today after the rain of the last couple of days.

The morning was quiet – which was good because I needed to go off into town for part of the day.

Trying to catch up on the ear tagging and managed to get a bunch of the twins done so am nearly caught up.

Including this lovely set of twin Drysdale ewe lambs, sired by Gilbert.

This evening though, just as we were about to give the pet lambs their bottle, we noticed something odd in the Twins mob. Two ewes and two lambs… and then we realised that the lambs were a couple of days old and the ewe that looked like she had “just lambed” was actually a ewe who had not lambed. She was desperately trying to get a lamb. One of those “Things that make you go hmmmm”. I can’t recall actually seeing a Merino ewe thieve – although I have suspected it on occasion – so decided this was probably an urgent situation to rectify.

Sure enough, there was a lamb attempting to “exit the building”. But I couldn’t extract it. The lamb was alive and she was just a little tight in the cervix (my fingers hurt now) and despite getting a head and a leg I couldn’t get the second leg to come fully. And it was difficult to feel further in to find out where the sticking point was. Finally, in desperation because the lamb was in dire straits, I wondered if the second leg was actually a leg from the second lamb.

Changed tactics slightly but by the time the lamb came out it was almost dead and we were unable to get it going.

The second lamb was positioned in the same way – one front leg forward with the head and the other leg back – and unfortunately it was also expiring as it came out. 🙁

The poor ewe was calling out and running around trying to steal a lamb, any lamb. I wondered if she would consider one of the pet lambs if she was that keen…..

Well, she was kind of interested so she is currently penned up with three hungry lambs “looking for love”. Not sure it will work but in the realm of “nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

The situation is a bit sad so we’d better finish on a more cheerful note:

LambMetrics – 30th August 2022

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LambMetrics is our lambing blog which tells some of the tales of farm life at lambing time.
Also contains pretty lamb pictures – and maybe a few confronting ones too.

Today started with a bit of a bang.

(In order of occurrence:)

  • Pull set of Castledale twins
  • Attempt to fix a vaginal prolapse in a ewe
  • Rescue lamb from A Place It Shouldn’t Be
  • Rescue another lamb from another Place It Shouldn’t Be
  • Milk a ewe
  • Feed pet lambs and a few extra
  • Shift some ewes and lambs into a fresh paddock (**CHAOS!**)

And then it was 9am.

Of course there were opportunities to smile…. like when confronted with this feisty Drysdale lad who has the Milk Bar all worked out now. 🙂

King of the castle!

The bonus of the day (wet as it was) was being able to get some non-farm work done.

And then it was time to organise the lunchtime feed, fix the prolapse (again), sort out the odd lamb that had been mixed up when the ewes and lambs got moved, watch a set of twins be born, watch the last (?) black English Leicester ewe birth a black lamb and cuddle a fluffy lamb.

As of this evening the prolapse appears to be under control (fingers crossed) and another set of twins had just been born.

No doubt it will be a case of “Rinse and Repeat” tomorrow!

Shop Talk:

PS. Don’t forget that our Fibre Advent Calendar Range Pre-Order ends tomorrow! 🙂

LambMetrics – 29th August 2022

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LambMetrics is our lambing blog which tells some of the tales of farm life at lambing time.
Also contains pretty lamb pictures – and maybe a few confronting ones too.

A bit of rain overnight – just enough to keep things squelching – and I was hoping for another quiet day in the lambing zone. Especially since I have 2 fingers taped together. LOL

The scene this morning involved a Drysdale ewe – who had scanned for a single pregnancy.

“She’s had two! The scanner was wrong!”

and then

“Things that make you go hmmmmmmm”

Wait a minute, one of these is not like the other….

I pull the drinking lamb away and discover it’s from a set of twins I pulled from a merino ewe (the ones where they were both trying to exit at the same time).

Oh no, the ewe has happily accepted him and she wasn’t as excited about her actual lamb.

So into the pen for her to get the thief away from her. Unfortunately, I suspect he had thieved nearly all the colostrum. Her lamb has been supplemented just in case. He was a bit daft too so that had to be sorted out.

Remember the English Leicester lamb that we grafted onto a Castledale ewe that had lost her lamb due to her teats being too large? Well, she accepted him for sure but we’ve still been having to restrain her to let the lamb drink. I had a big talk to her today – reminding her that it would be more comfortable for everyone if she let the lamb drink little and often. I then put a collar on her in anticipation of needing something to hold. Let them out after bub had had his drink. Fifteen minutes later I see…..

Winner! 😀

Lots of single lambs being born at the moment. Will try catch up on them tomorrow if the weather is good enough. Only one set of twins born today.

Will finish on a sight this afternoon that makes me smile.

LambMetrics – 28th August 2022

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LambMetrics is our lambing blog which tells some of the tales of farm life at lambing time.
Also contains pretty lamb pictures – and maybe a few confronting ones too.

Today involved 4 sets of twins, an array of singles and the slight feeling that you are going around in circles and losing control. LOL

Having the singles lamb separately is not doing my daily accounting any good. Frustrating but I can’t drift sheep into different paddocks like the twins mob.

And, just for fun, one of the knuckles on my left hand has swollen up. Presumably a result of assistance rendered yesterday. Let’s hope I don’t have to help any for a couple of days!

In an effort to try get an earlier bedtime tonight here are a handful of pictures from my day. 🙂